Ugh. Can this be changed? I have four monitors and would hate to have the taskbar run all the way across.

Personally I've always dragged the taskbar to the left of the screen so it runs vertically down the side. I find it far easier to use, especially since everything is in widescreen now giving more space at the sides. Means it is only ever on the primary monitor as well. Having the start menu drop down as you click it feels much more natural as well.

I've also finally gave in after realizing that I bought 32GB RAM for my new machine but only had Windows 7 Home Premium (which allows only 16GB). It really isn't bad. Everything I used worked perfectly as before. The new "Start" is just a full-screen version of the good old start menu, or one could also look at it as just a desktop with rectangular widgets. I've come to love hitting the Win key and getting the weather, calendar, new mail and news headline updates all at a glance. Hitting the Windows key again while in the Start Screen will take me back to my previous application, be it an App or a traditional program like World of Warcraft. The task manager is way better, too.

I run a dual monitor setup and this time the "taskbar on all monitors" option is actually useful! If I remember correctly, back in Windows 7, if I show the taskbar on all desktops, then each taskbar will show all the windows on all the desktops, which was absolutely stupid. Now the taskbar on each desktop only list the windows residing on that desktop, making task switching much easier. That's how multi-desktop should be done! (And the wallpapers on each desktop can change independently, too!) The system tray only appear on the main desktop, which is perfect.

As for the new breed of "Apps", I don't really use them. We're not forced to use any of those full screen apps.

As you can see, the only Apps I have there are the weather, news, mail, photo and the Windows 8 App Store. Everything else are what's called "traditional desktop programs". It's just an oversized Start menu with some dynamic displays. The two pics above Torchlight 2 are the Desktop app and the Photo app (it automatically slide-shows all the pics in my Pictures media library, used here just as eye candy).

Most of the built-in Apps are bad at best, they may be good enough for tablets, but they're just not good enough for a desktop.

Overall, I must say it was the right decision to upgrade while it's still on discount; but this is probably one edition of Windows that can be ignored. It's good. Make no mistake, it runs solid. But if Windows 7 runs fine for you, there's no reason to upgrade. I only upgraded because it was cheaper to upgrade to Windows 8 Pro than it was to upgrade to Windows 7 Ultimate.

is there a way to keep the menu bar with settings/computer shut down permanently open or create shortcuts to that? annoys me that I have to move the mouse into a corner to make that visible. might be good on a phone/tablet, but I certainly got enough space on my 2 screens to show that.Otherwise it looks neat, although I wish more stuff could be configured. The whole control panel/settings thing doesn't allow you to do all that much. Plus it certainly feels like microsoft would once again love to have and pass on all personal info they can somehow get out of me. So many options 'do you want to share this and that' that made me feel uneasy and that I turned off ...

Kai wrote:is there a way to keep the menu bar with settings/computer shut down permanently open or create shortcuts to that? annoys me that I have to move the mouse into a corner to make that visible. might be good on a phone/tablet, but I certainly got enough space on my 2 screens to show that.Otherwise it looks neat, although I wish more stuff could be configured. The whole control panel/settings thing doesn't allow you to do all that much. Plus it certainly feels like microsoft would once again love to have and pass on all personal info they can somehow get out of me. So many options 'do you want to share this and that' that made me feel uneasy and that I turned off ...

Win+C opens the charms bar. There are also shortcuts for the various things on the bar - Win+Q for search is the one that springs to mind, since I use that a lot. Looks like it's Win+I for settings and win+H for share.

I liked desktop 8 a lot (mostly using it a 7 + occasional snapped apps). So I went and bought a surface RT a couple of weeks back, and I'm liking that more than the other tablets I've used. Maybe I'm just odd?